Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer - Noble, Bureaucrat, and Encomendero Indios: Rethinking Race and Difference in the Spanish Philippines

Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer is Lecturer in Global Medieval and Early Modern History at the University of Bristol, with a particular focus on political, religious, social, and racial processes across the Spanish Empire. He is especially interested in understanding how the legislation devised and enacted by the king’s government was received and applied both in Spain and in colonial settings and what this meant for the everyday lived experience of Spanish subjects across the Empire. His current project looks at patterns of family formation and racial categorisations in the early modern Spanish Philippines. His first book, entitled Habsburg England: Politics, Religion, and Society in the Reign of Philip I (1554-1558), is forthcoming with Brill in 2023.